


Nuit Noire

by AmauriF



Category: Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmauriF/pseuds/AmauriF
Summary: Come what mayI will love youUntil my dying day
Relationships: Christian/Satine (Moulin Rouge!)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 8





	Nuit Noire

There was a sepulchral and deafening silence in that hospital, occasionally broken by the groans of pain or the coughing up sums of some patient. That, of course, if it were possible to call that place a hospital. The truth, however, was a little more bitter: it was a charity house maintained by nuns and that welcomed dying sick people, providing them with care in their last days of life.

During the day, it was a busy place: doctors and volunteer nurses came to evaluate some of the hospitalized patients (mostly indigent or people with insufficient income to afford an hospitalization in Paris) while priests came to offer extreme anoint to the most severe. In particular, to those who, according to the judgment of the religious, would not see a new sunrise. But at night, the story was different. Just before the sun came down, the movement fell: there were no more doctors, nurses or priests. There were only the sick, the nuns, their lanterns and death. Every night, the nuns made rounds through the beds, arranged side by side, medicating those in need, collecting pots and sometimes covering patients to face with the sheet before calling a colleague to remove the body from the hall, taking it God knows where.

On the three nights he's been there, Christian turns it off seventeen times.

That night was especially cold. At times, he came to think that, perhaps, it was not the low temperatures of autumn, but the death that was approaching, each day closer, as breathing went from an involuntary act to a very costly and painful work. A pain that only increased with each coughing access, causing his chest to vibrate like a trombone and blood soiling his clothes. Anyway, one of the nuns who passed by his side in the nightly round covered him with another blanket. Maybe (and just maybe), it was really cold outside.

It was difficult to establish a point in time that would determine the beginning of all that. But at some point, Christian realized that some clothes no longer fit him. Almost all of them, actually. He had lost a lot of weight and, at first, he told himself that the cause of it was his eternal lament, which took away his appetite. But before he became convinced of it, he had a fever. A high fever that came with the sunset and accompanied him for much of the night, giving him chills that made him tremble. And finally, the cough came. A dry and irritating cough that, with chronicity, made his chest hurt. A cough that, in a matter of a few months, came accompanied by blood. And in the meantime, he continued to lose weight.

There was no denying it anymore. As much as he told himself he was fine, he and everyone around him knew exactly what was going on, even though no one had the guts to say it out loud. The fearsome name was only pronounced when, weakened, Christian could no longer get out of bed and, desolate to see his friend in that form, Toulousse-Lautrec called a doctor. Christian still remembered the last time he saw his reflection, in the bathroom mirror of his room, before leaving there forever and occupying his bed in the charity house: a pale, dry-skinned figure, so slimmed down that the ribs were visible even under his shirt, which seemed immensely wide due to illness. It was not without reason that, among the various names he had, some called the disease a consumption.

It was more than obvious why all that started. So many hours beside her, in that tragic love, they wouldn't let him move on without a mark. Until then, everyone thought that this mark would be just the immense scar engraved on his heart. No one suspected that all that, too, had left scars on his lungs.

Christian wasn't an idiot. He knew what was coming. He did not need to think much to deduce what had been said by one of the nuns to Toulousse, who, even a short distance away, looked at him with regret.

"Are you all right, my friend?" the artist's words needed to deflect the knot in his throat to be externalized, when he was kneeling beside his bed, holding his hand with compassion and affection.

Feeling chest pains and an absurd shortness of breath at the slightest attempt to speak, Christian had only nodded affirmatively. Actually, it was clear he wasn't well. But he had already accepted his condition and, above all, his fate. He had walked a path of no return, and there was only one end. And that end was near.

"Do you regret...?" Toulousse questioned him, unable to complete the sentence.

But Christian didn't need him to complete it. He knew exactly what Toulousse was talking about. It was evident that all this was the fruit of the closeness and love between the two. The hours they spent together had been the happiest of her life, even if they had been decisive in shortening it. Even so, there was only one answer to Toulousse's question.

"The greatest thing... you will... ever learn..."

"... is just to love and be loved in return", Toulousse completed, preventing the friend from eliminating the little air he could still breathe.

No. He didn't regret it. And Toulousse already imagined that. After all, that was the tragic climax of the ideals he had always defended: truth, beauty, freedom... love. There was no way to be different: sooner or later, every love story has a sad ending. And that was his.

The farewell was silent. Unable to move due to shortness of breath, Christian felt his friend lean over him and put a kiss on his forehead. There was a tear on the little artist's face when he turned his back on Christian forever. They both knew this was their last meeting.

Despite the blanket that the nun had stretched over his body, the young bohemian still felt cold. A cold that froze the tips of your fingers, feet and hands, and made his teeth beat against each other. And there was the pain. A lot of pain. An immense pain that hindered his every attempt to breathe that damn air that seemed to refuse to enter his lungs, as if all his effort and his pain to inhale him would do no good. A slow, horrible suffocation.

A new chill ran through his body from end to end of his spine. Despite barely being able to move, Christian felt some muscles in his arms and legs contracting unintentionally. He could feel his heart rate increase down his chest. Meanwhile, his vision became blurred and darkened in the corners. Realizing that the moment had come, an elderly nun sat beside his bed and held his hand. But he no longer had the ability to feel anything at all.

Or at least that's what he thought.

The next instant, it all went away. There was no more pain, there was no more cold and, mainly, there was no more shortness of breath. There was only him, drowned in an immense darkness, and a obnoxlight shining in the sky above him. A light that was getting closer and closer, circling him. And at that moment, he realized he wasn't weak anymore. He was strong and felt more alive than ever. As easily as before, Christian stood up, watching attentively and curiously to that majestic light.

That's when he realized it wasn't a simple light. Swinging on a trapeze and with the same silver sequined outfit and the same black top she wore the day they met, there she was. In all its splendor, in all its glory. There was the angel he had fallen in love with, with a mesmerizing smile on his face and reaching out to him. There she was, the only shining element in all that emptiness, the sun to which he was faithfully devout.

And all of a sudden, there was no more fear. There was only peace.

Without thinking twice, Christian reached out to Satine. Their fingers touched each other for a few moments before she closed hers around his. "Come what may," he could see the woman's lips moving, but without emitting any sound, at the same time as a tear, as bright as the sequins he wore, dripped from her eyes.

Finally together, Christian was pulled up.


End file.
